Sioux Falls Scientists endorse Arctic Dinosaurs for showing us that dinosaurswere as adaptable as mammals in handling extreme environments.Maybe actually being warm-blooded had something to do with it.

How is it that dinosaurs managed to survive and even thrive in the gloom of the dark and frigid polar regions? It is one of paleontology's most intriguing enigmas; but now, a unique field expedition covered exclusively by NOVA will set out for Alaska's North Slope to defrost a jackpot of new fossil clues.

With the help of stunning CGI, experts will breathe life into the polar dinosaurs' lives and environment in vivid detail. The team of researchers will combine extreme engineering and perilous fossil hunting - digging a tunnel into the permafrost in order to collect the dinosaur bones - and with Alaska's spectacular wilderness as a backdrop, Arctic Dinosaurs will reveal a prehistoric lost world for the first time.

5-11-16 Seabed core reveals how lush Antarctica changed to icy desertSeabed core reveals how lush Antarctica changed to icy desertA single core of marine sediment holds the entire record of Antarctica's journey from subtropical forest to the ice-covered desert it is now. ANTARCTICA was once covered with tropical forests. Now researchers have fully charted the slow transition from tropical paradise to icy wasteland, thanks to a single marine sediment core. It shows for the first time that temperate forests were a key transitional stage before falling temperatures turned the continent into a white wasteland. The core was taken from the sea floor off Wilkes Land in East Antarctica as part of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Programme. Pollen grains found inside show how vegetation on the continent changed between the early Eocene, around 54 million years ago, and into the Miocene, 12 million years ago. “The core from Wilkes Land is the first to give the entire story from the Eocene all the way through,” says Ulrich Salzmann of Northumbria University in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, who presented preliminary results at the European Geosciences Union meeting in Vienna last month. “Lush, green Antarctica finally gives way to ice some 12 million years ago, as temperatures drop“ “It seems that vegetation had disappeared completely by 12 million years ago.” The core’s story starts in much warmer climes, around 16 °C, in the early Eocene. Back then, the climate was subtropical, the verdant landscape dominated by palms and trees such as the monkey puzzle.

Total Page Views

Arctic DinosaursWarm-Blooded Creatures of the Cretaceous

Sioux Falls Scientists endorse Arctic Dinosaurs for showing us that dinosaurswere as adaptable as mammals in handling extreme environments.Maybe actually being warm-blooded had something to do with it.